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There’s an unexpected quality that wilderness often has, a quality that many of its celebrants often ignore—mainly, I think, because that quality is normally thought to be confined to the urban warrens they (we) commonly despise: zones of depressing ugliness. I know what many readers may think: if you’re depressed to begin with, and determined to stay that way, you can find confirmation anywhere. That’s true, but I don’t think it’s the operative cause here—I have gone into many stretches of untouched forest, in years past, enjoying myself thoroughly, and stumbled upon small areas that simply gave me the creeps. Even looking at them from a distance would often send a wave of revulsion over me. The one trait they seem to have in common is their tendency to make me feel unwelcome. Usually, of course, they’re unattractive in the conventional sense; it would take a photographic genius to find a single decent wide-angle image in them. Normally they’re dark, or at least shadowy, and often feel confining or excessively concealed. There was a place like this in those woods, within sight of my second camp: a stand of young spruces that ran beside the sloping section of the lane down to the river. I could observe that black mass of trees from its north, east and south sides on my walks to fetch bathwater, and the only attraction it ever held, for several months, was the likelihood that deer would appreciate its cover, and that if I peered into it long enough with the binoculars, I might just catch a glimpse of one, possibly peering back. It was only after the Crank got on my case about overstaying my welcome that I actually entered that spooky grove, merely wondering if he ever would have seen me, had I put the camp in there to begin with. Of course there was no place among those trees that was half as dark as they appeared to be from a distance. But I had no regrets over giving them a pass—they were far too closely-grown, and too full on their lower branches to offer the high, green spaciousness of my present campsite. They had more the atmosphere of a fugitive’s last retreat—I knew I could never tolerate that thicket-like gloom for very long. Yet the experience of at last entering that forbidding zone did have the effect of neutralizing its subtle menace—it ceased to look threatening and became simply another part of the small forest where I lived. As for the deer, I looked for them often through the glasses amid that dark tangle, but never saw any.
I cannot deny that making that remark, even in so imaginary a way, gave me a strange contentment for a while—a brief while—as I entered the trees and crunched through the snow. I knew the effect would be fleeting, because the mind of a human being—especially a civilized adult—is not a singularity; its parts, of which there are many, can reflect upon each other, and seldom seem unanimous on any point, any conviction, any expression. I too would like to think that this is the normal mental state of a responsible, self-correcting citizen of an orderly society, but I know better. Even the most casual study of anthropology is enough to dispel that perverse myth. |
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One clear and starry winter’s night, as I walked along the path around the barn, headed for the entrance to the black woods a quarter-mile away, I was expecting the wave of despair that always seem to wash over me each time I ended a day with that solitary stroll. But on that night, for reasons unknown, it didn’t come. Instead I felt a gentle benediction in the stars, the stillness, even in the mere fact of having a warm, quiet shelter of my own in those woods. My mind then drifted to a fantasy that I suspect has become a very common one: the experience, which I’ve not yet had, of being interviewed on a television talk show. And I imagined myself saying, for the first time in my life, “I never really believed in God, until I realized, that for some reason, He seemed to believe in me….”|
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